


What Dreams May Come

by Roadstergal



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Dreams, Gen, M/M, Mindfuck
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-28
Updated: 2011-05-30
Packaged: 2017-10-19 20:27:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/204877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roadstergal/pseuds/Roadstergal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John's dreams are getting a little strange.  Combining the finished BBC version, the pilot, and John's wandering wound from Doyle-canon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Based on an odd thought that came to me. Thanks to kahvi for inspiration and beta.

John Watson had dreams.

This was not an unusual occurrence, for other people, he had been told. An array of friends and girlfriends over the years had mentioned dreaming about this thing or that thing, falling from the great height or giving a presentation unprepared and nude, and had looked at John blankly when he mentioned he never had dreams himself. Some had smugly commented that yes, he _did_ have dreams - everyone did, and he must just not remember them. But as that was utterly indistinguishable from not having them at all, it hardly mattered. All he knew was that he went to sleep at night, and woke up a subjective few seconds later in the morning, feeling refreshed.

All of that changed after Afghanistan, of course.

For weeks afterwards, he couldn't sleep without having vivid nightmares. They all revolved around the same theme. He and his mates preparing to roll out in the morning - the omniscient _him_ of his dream knowing what was going to happen, but powerless to change it. The day was hot, as they all were, down on the flats; sweat trickled down his back under his uniform and heavy gear. Then, the ambush; jumping out of the transport, running over _there_ , as directed, taking aim at the fighters who poked their heads out here and there to get a clear shot. The sniper, coming up from behind; Todd, dead, instantly, John shot, writhing on the ground and screaming. The hands grabbing him and dragging, the helicopter ride back, the pilot flying evasively, every change of direction jolting the bullet in his shoulder and making him sick with pain.

He always woke up in a cold sweat somewhere in the sequence, his brain never letting him get to the landing, the medics, the delicious haze of morphine that swept all the pain away.

His therapist had told him that a change of scene might help, and she _did_ seem to have a point, there. When he moved to 221B, he stopped dreaming. He slept like his old self, dead through the night. Was it the change of scene, or was it the action - something else for his brain to occupy itself with? Again, it hardly mattered - the dreams had stopped.

* * *

But, three months later, they started to come back. Intermittently, at first, but then with greater and greater frequency, until the night that he found himself trotting down the stairs in his sweats at 3 AM, unwilling to spend another morning lying sleeplessly in bed with dark thoughts spinning though his head.

"You thought you were over those?" Sherlock murmured from where he lay on the couch, flipping through a magazine.

John had never mentioned dreams, but he was getting used to being read by Sherlock at least as easily as the magazine. "Yea. I don't know what brought them back." He filled the kettle and put it on the stove, fishing the tea out from behind the various industrial poisons Sherlock stowed in the cupboard.

"It's been quiet." Sherlock's brows narrowed. "I'm going a bit mad myself."

John shrugged. "It's been all right - the clinic is busy, I hardly feel bored."

Sherlock threw the magazine from him with a frustrated sigh. "Oh, yes, the _clinic_. Plucking splinters out of middle-aged men who think they can be carpenters, and treating sixteen-year-olds with venereal disease. It must be _terribly_ fulfilling." Sherlock flopped back against the pillow, hard.

"It's good work," John protested, putting tea in the pot and staring sullenly at the kettle, daring it to boil.

"Yes, I can tell it's keeping you highly satisfied. Not being able to sleep through the night for three weeks in a row is always a sign your life is going well." Sherlock reached behind himself and pulled out a tabloid.

John drank his tea in silence.

* * *

Well, John thought with something between wry self-deprecation and squelched panic, at least now he might actually sleep well. If he got out of this alive.

Time seemed to have slowed, and every detail of the scene stood out in sharp relief. The targeting lasers, dancing over both of them - the one that sat on Sherlock's forehead, sharp-edged and lethal, doing something unpleasantly visceral to John. The stink of chlorine. The slippery tiles hard under his feet. The pile of Semtex in the corner - and over the top of it, Moriarty's face. Contemptuous, it was, and as it changed from that to surprise, then horror, and as Sherlock pulled the trigger, John considered that it was almost worth death to see that smug look wiped off of that bastard's face. Then, the explosion, nothing but light and heat...

"Gah!" John yelled, a sharp pain in his shoulder. He looked around, confused. The pool was gone - he was in a mobile operating theater, surrounded by cots with other men in various stages of 'wounded'...

"Sorry," the gentle-voiced doctor said, replacing the bandage. "Just wanted to check and make sure there was still no infection. It's quite clean," he continued, smiliig brightly. "We'll have you back up and about in no time."

"I'm in..." John looked around, dazed.

"Feeling a little disoriented?" John nodded, his eyes wide, and the doctor nodded, still smiling. "It's normal; you've been on some rather strong painkillers. They've been known to give quite vivid dreams." He patted John's hand, then walked to the next bed.

John lay back against the hard army pillow, his head spinning.

* * *

John Watson had dreams.

He had assumed he would stop having them, after his surprisingly rapid recovery (a fortunate trajectory, as the gentle-voiced doctor had put it); and certainly, he had nothing like that shockingly vivid narrative during the drug-induced delirium (detectives and murders and sexy secret agents - his teenage self must still be struggling to be heard).

He could have gone back home. He had been wounded in the line of duty, after all, and could have been honorably discharged - but he hadn't had to leave his burgeoning career as a cardiologist and sign up in the first place, had he? For whatever reason (and he never really felt like thinking about said reasons), this was the road he had chosen. But after rejoining active duty - he started to have dreams.

Vague ones, at first, barely remembered when he woke. Hazy feelings of adrenaline and excitement and _motion_ \- they were kinetic, that he remembered, and he had the sense of the dark, cello-like voice of his flatmate from the original dream, nagging at the back of his mind when he woke and rolled out of his bunk, making it tightly while still half-awake out of drilled-in habit.

Perhaps the dreams were born of boredom - and yes, there was boredom in plenty. Life in Afghanistan consisted of mind-numbing boredom separated by short bursts of frenetic, desperate activity (and yes, John worried about what it said about him that he chose that). During one of those lulls, John found himself back in that London flat again, sitting in a chair that felt oddly familiar, the black-haried man pacing, talking about this and that, ranting a little, John smiling up at him - and with the strange sensibility of dreams, them kissing felt perfectly natural, and John jerked bolt upright, barking, "Sherlock!"

"Shut the fuck up, Watson," someone muttered blearily from another bunk, and John settled back in bed, a little disturbed. Yes, he hadn't had sex in over two years, but couldn't his dreams have obligingly sent him a giggling girl with bouncing breasts?

* * *

Camping out under the stars. Lovely, eh? Well, less lovely when it was a forced camp, your transport stranded without a spark, and when you were fairly deeply in territory that was regularly moving back and forth between 'them' and 'us' in ownership. Gaz said he was pretty sure it was 'us' today, but John didn't feel good about 'pretty sure.' Neither did anyone else, especially when they discovered it would be a day and a half before they could get any assistance.

They all played driveway mechanics for a bit, but it was hopeless. Servicing a Humvee was apparently a little more complex than fixing the refrigerator when it’s on the blink.

So they set up a sentinel rotation for the night, bivouacking in an old blast crater. John volunteered for the first shift, feeling far too jumpy to sleep, and Gaz joined him, equally jumpy. The desert nights were as cold as they days were hot, so they moved close to each other, huddling for warmth and setting each other off every few minutes, seeing enemies in every stirring nocturnal creature.

John was sure he would not be able to sleep when they were relieved, but the tension and jumpiness had drained him, and he fell into an exhausted slumber almost immediately, his head on his pack.

 _John_ , that deep voice purred, _come closer..._ And his flatmate was there, in his bed, nude; he lowered himself atop John, pressing against his body, his lips almost touching John's, just tickling the edges of them. John felt himself respond, eagerly, surprised but wanting...

He was pressed up against Gaz's back, John's lips brushing the man's jacket collar, John's erection pressed into his back. John jerked back, quickly, as Gaz smiled and murmured something in his sleep.

John _had_ to do something about those dreams.


	2. Chapter 2

"Bad luck, eh?" It was the same gentle-voiced doctor who had tended his shoulder. John had avoided learning his name before, and was not feeling terribly much like learning it now. All he felt like doing was lying in the cot, sulking, and feeling sorry for himself. He glared at the doctor, who looked away, then back at John with a sigh.

"It's a bit worse than your shoulder was," he said, his expressive forehead wrinkling itself into a Golden Retriever's look of infinite sadness. "Shrapnel isn't as clean as a bullet, and this has torn through quite a bit of muscle. You're lucky you still have the leg, truth to tell. You'll have to go through quite a bit of rehabilitation, and I can't promise anything even then."

John shrugged, not answering, and looked at the wall as the doctor called over a burly male nurse to change the bandage. John bit his lip as the jostling made the wound ache, but his brain was blank. There was nothing here for him, now. He was useless, there was no way he would stay; he would definitely be sent back.

* * *

Sent back, to England. There he was, in jolly ol' same, in army housing. It looked a great deal like the barracks in Afghanistan - the same small room, the same drab olive, scratchy covers on the small one-person bed, the same small closet for his small amount of clothing. But it was cold, and the damp weather made his leg ache.

He still went for walks, as the physical therapist he saw weekly told him to. She was a businesslike black woman who rubbed his scarred thigh vigorously, helped him stretch it, and gave him a list of exercises to work on every week. Some weeks, he'd manage half the list, and she'd shake her head and sigh in the same way as she did when he managed none of it.

The walks were good, though; they were something other than the timeless dullness of his room. They were sunshine - filtered grey with clouds and rain, as often as not, but still. They lifted his spirits with the views of trees and pavement and normal people, if only a bit. Yet the evenings were all the same - dark, quiet things, fading into restless sleep with dreams he could not remember. That was likely why he finally gave in to Samford's urgings to meet him for dinner. He could have taken a cab, but the rather longer-than-usual walk to the restaurant was a challenge to overcome - and he did, in a bit more time than he had estimated.

Stamford was waiting patiently despite John's lateness, and seemed quite pleased to see him, giving him rather a lot of 'haven't seen you in ages's and 'you're looking well's. John tetchily responded that he wasn't looking well at all - and he knew, because his mirror told him. It showed him quite clearly his excessively hollow cheeks and sunburnt skin and prickly hair, growing out uncomfortably from the military buzz.

Stamford grinned wryly as he tucked into his dinner. "Well, you know - I was just hoping I could talk you into moving out of that army housing. It'd be good for you, I think."

John shrugged. "I'd love nothing better, but I can't afford a decent place in London. And I'm damned if I'm going to live in some utter crap part of town."

Stamford chewed and swallowed, looking at John with interest. "Remember when I set Jim up with that flat-share in London? It was just before you left."

John frowned. A little tickle of remembrance nagged at the back of his mind. "Not really - tell me more?"

Stamford laughed. "Oh, don't tell me you don't remember! He was complaining _endlessly_ at your farewell party."

John sat back in his chair, twiddling his water glass and trying to remember. He had been very, _very_ drunk - not usually his thing, but it was an odd circumstance, and Harry had been pushing booze on him all night. Her version of affection, likely. But yes - wasn't Jim complaining about someone? John frowned hard, trying to remember. Then his eyes widened. A picture, he vaguely remembered - Jim showed him a phone photo of a thin, dark-haired man, frowning. _That's the arsehole. Just impossible. Shoots up the walls, puts body parts in the fridge - total nutter. He's a poof, too, I just know it._

"You do remember!" Stamford laughed at the expression on John's face. "Jim moved out - he couldn't stand living there. But I know you're as stubborn a man as any, and I think you might fare better. One thing I'll say - the flat's a fantastic location, and it's," he twittered a bad imitation of a bird, " _cheep_."

John nodded. "I might do, at that," he said, thoughtfully, and Stamford lifted his glass in approval.

* * *

Stamford had given John the address, and again, it rang a dull note of vague familiarity. It was far enough from his army housing that John did indeed take a cab, the next morning, and stepped out onto the pavement with some trepidation. He leaned on his cane and looked at the door for a moment, pondering.

Was this the silliest thing he had ever done?

Well, it wasn't so bad, was it, really? It made a great deal of sense - it was a good deal on a flat in a location he liked, one that might get him out of his grey funk. It came with a recommendation from a friend - well, a recommendation that the bloke was a nutter, but a trustworthy nutter, at least.

John knocked on the door of 221B Baker Street.

He held his breath. He shouldn't have bothered with trepidation; after a moment, a nonthreatening, almost matronly woman answered. "Yes, dear?" she asked, smiling.

"I'm here to see a Mr. Sherlock Holmes," John replied.

The woman nodded. "Oh, you have a case for him! Yes, of course - up the stairs, first door, just knock. If he asks why I didn't show you up, tell him it's not my job." She smiled, then disappeared into the ground-floor flat.

 _Case_ , John thought. So the man _was_ a detective of some sort - had Jim mentioned that at the party? He must have - how else would it have found its way into John's dream? Nevertheless, he simply could not remember the conversation, that night, and the more he tried to remember, the more his brain obligingly fed him false recollections.

John made his way up the stairs, which were narrow and steep; definitely a bit more challenging than the ones he was used to. He must have made a decent bit of noise, as the door to the flat flew open as soon as he knocked.

The man who opened the door looked at John with an intense gaze, and John looked back, curiously. He looked shockingly similar to the dream - all lanky height and razor-sharp cheekbones, with odd bluish-green eyes staring out - and John wryly congratulated his subconscious. Sherlock's hair, though, was not black, in this light; it was dark, but reddish - almost ginger. The phone picture had played him false, there.

"Afghanistan or Iraq?" Sherlock asked, without preamble.

"Afghanistan... how did you..." A strange feeling of déjà vu swept over John.

Sherlock sighed. "Sunburnt, buzz cut, military bearing, you're practically advertising it. You're also not here to see me for a case. Most of the military charity groups in the area know better than to send any pathetic limping vets around here, so you're likely not another go at that, either..."

"I heard you were looking for a flatmate," John interrupted, feeling as daring as if he _had_ actually been living with the man.

Sherlock looked at him, curiously. His voice, John noted, wasn't as ridiculously deep as it had been in his dreams - but that had been a bit of an extreme, really, based on Jim's hyperbole. "You're a friend of that fellow who roomed with me two years ago. That's the last flatmate I had. He warned you about my habits - but you fancy yourself a stubborn sort who can put up with a man with habits as strange as mine." He grinned, obviously seeing the confirmation of his deductions on John's face, and the expression was oddly gleeful, on such a thin and dour face. "You have no idea. But you're welcome to try. Bring your things Tuesday week. I have to finish up an experiment, and it might kill you."

The door slammed shut. John paused for a moment, looking it - a fairly normal, inconspicuous old wooden door - before heading back down the stairs and out into the fresh air. His leg ached from the atypical exertion, but it would likely be good for him in the long run.

He wondered what dreams he would have, here...


End file.
